This shell script allows you to remove multiple VTDs from VIOS. It assumes the following naming convention for the VTDs: XXXXXXXXXX_Lnn XXXXXXXXXX is the LPAR name L is a constant prefix for LUN nn is the two digit LUN ID. This has a leading zero for...

I recently got a question about how to script disabling paths for a Virtual SCSI adapter so you can prepare to take a VIO server down for maintenance. Of course you can just take down the VIO server and the Virtual SCSI will failover to the other...

Over my career as an AIX administrator I have run in to problems with the "Maximum Virtual Adapters" LPAR profile setting many times. This setting controls the highest virtual slot number that you can use on an VIO or AIX LPAR. It is not...

I've been doing some work on a script to validate and visualize virtual SCSI slots in a PowerVM environment. In order to get a single VSCSI server/client adapter pair to work, 8 items must be setup correctly: VIO server name (defined in server adapter)...

If you are anything like me, there has been several times over the years where you have said "Argh! If only I could make a VIO server a VSCSI client of another VIO server!" There are a couple of scenario's where this could be particularly useful: #1...

If you are using virtual SCSI (VSCSI) disks, you may occasionally find you need to reclaim them. (Shocking as it may seem, sometimes people actually do give back disk they have requested for some temporary project). Here's how to reclaim a VSCSI disk and its...

As part of a HDLM device driver upgrade, we had to remove any native MPIO disks from a Virtual I/O server, install the driver and re-create the mappings. Since this was a new HDLM install, we have to do the below to to get HDLM installed: - Disable paths for...

This is a small update to my previous posting on mapping Virtual SCSI disks easily via a script. As input to the script you give it the LPAR name, the label for the mapping, and the LUN serial number, and the script will find the VIO servers, figure out...

This article covers how to look at an existing AIX server and trace back Virtual SCSI disks back to VIO and find out what the VIO backing device is for any given AIX Virtual SCSI disk. This works for both traditional Virtual SCSI disks and...

One of the drawbacks of using VIO VSCSI to map SAN LUN's to LPAR's is the time it takes to map the disks through on the VIO servers. The LUN's must be created on the SAN and allocated to the VIO server. On the VIO server you must then map each hdisk to the...

Here’s a question I received recently, that relates to virtual
SCSI hdisk path priority. Hi, Chris, I use MPIO for our virtualization environment. I'd like to check which path is currently used. How can I get the result? For example: [nim:/]# lspath...

If only a VIO server could be a VSCSI client ... A vanilla installation of the VIO server is very easy - once you can get
the LPAR to access the installation files. But that's the part which can be unnecessarily cumbersome and time consuming. Sure, you can...

Need to update the running attributes of a virtual SCSI adapter on
an AIX system? Try these steps. I want to change value for the vscsi_err_recov attribute
to fast_fail .
I can’t do this if the adapter is busy i.e. has open/available paths to a disk...

Recently I tried to run the chpath command to set the priority on a VSCSI disk. Here's the command I ran: chpath -l hdisk4 -p vscsi1 -a priority=2 And here's the unfortunate error I hit: Method error (/etc/methods/chgdisk): 0514-080 Invalid routine...

SPOILT BY VIRTUALISATION We're really spoiled with virtualisation. It's so easy for us to map a LUN or a logical volume and build an LPAR, then load an operating system onto it. This makes it easy for temporary, test systems to be built and never get cleaned...

UPDATED: Chris Gibson has pointed out a couple of other AIX 7.1 features which have been backported to AIX 6.1 from TL 6. topas screens now allow a freeze / unfreeze by hitting the spacebar In topas you can also page down and page up through the data For more...